Inside INdigital: Fultondale Tornado and Visual Data

Guest blog written by
Laken Detweiler - Social Media Specialist | INdigital

On the evening of January 25,  a tornado moved through Alabama leaving its mark on Fultondale. Buildings were destroyed, people were injured, homes were ruined, and people were left devastated. When disaster strikes, most people just see what is happening on the surface, not what telecommunicators, police, fire, and other first responders are working on. 

When weather advisories began early in the afternoon for the area, Director of Jefferson County 911 Donnie West’s began to prepare. As the advisories turned into warnings, there started to be an influx in calls for incidents, sightings, and calls for help because people were trapped.

“You can imagine when a wreck happens, we get numerous phone calls because people are passing by, but since people were alerted that there were potential tornados through the afternoon, most people were up and not asleep,” said West. “I think that was another reason we got so many calls as well. People were alerted [to what was going on].”

As the calls came in, West and his staff started tracking the tornado as it moved through Fultondale and crossed over into the Center Point area. When it comes to natural disasters, emergency response has to be ready to serve the public.

“Communication wise, it was just a lot of calls in a short amount of time, but that is something we are used to anyway,” West said. “We have prepared for weather events when there is snow, rain, or a tornado. We up staff to make sure that we have enough people to answer the calls, but we also bring our administrative staff in to help backfill in case we’ve got decisions that need to be made about deploying other people and stuff like that.”

The storm took power out for many people, including The City of Tarrant. When they lost power, their dispatchers joined West and the rest of his staff at their center so that they were able to dispatch police and fire. Jefferson County 911 currently dispatches for the Fultondale Fire Department, but as the tornado came through, they briefly took over the police department’s dispatch.

As the initial influx of calls slowed, emergency personnel switched modes. They had begun to grasp how many people were possibly injured and could better utilize the mutual and automatic aid response. Logistics Manager Jeff Dempsey stepped in as all the mutual and automatic aid departments responded to negotiate communication amongst all the heavy rescues coming in to have a more coordinated effort. Dempsey traveled over to Fultondale, so he was on the scene to help lead the more coordinated response.

After the tornado passed Dempsey’s house, he headed into Jefferson County’s dispatcher center. Soon after he arrived, they were made aware of how devastatingly Fultondale had been hit. This meant that radio traffic volume was high because of the mutual aid resources that were coming in from across the county. The increased radio traffic led to an uncoordinated structure of communication; everyone was on different channels. West directed Dempsey to head to Fultondale to coordinate communication.

“What I did was coordinated and got all of them [rescue personnel] on the interoperability channel on the radio system and started settling the communications down so that we could manage the communication better,” said Dempsey. “We started developing a plan of how we were going to utilize all of the channels [to communicate]. Not only did we have a lot of fire department agencies there but several law enforcement agencies that are not as common communicating with each other, so we ended up putting them on channels as well, on these interop channels, in the event that we needed time together it would be very easy to tie everyone together.”

Throughout the night, emergency response personnel worked diligently to help those that were injured, trapped, and unable to get out. The sheriff’s department added air support and provided video of what actually happened and what the aftermath of the tornado looked like. 

“I helped them create this command post for all of the agencies to get together, and we were able to view [the video] that night and see a lot of things,” said Dempsey. “Of course, you realize it’s not as clear as it would be in the daytime. But it did give a good visual picture of the devastation we were dealing with, and it did make better planning for the next operational period that they were going to do, which was at daylight.”

Through this event, West worked with the VP of Market Management, Caleb Branch at INdigital, about getting call data analysis information as the event progressed. 

“Post tornado, public officials and people we serve all want to know about the number of calls that 911 centers received, what type of calls were they, and how did we respond to it: was it fire, EMS, or fire and EMS,” said West. “That’s what I was looking for Caleb to get, and that’s what he did. We were able to capture those events as they were occurring.”

Branch also created a timelapse mapping video that allowed West to visually see a tornado path based on phone calls coming in. 

“For us, it gives us an analysis to let us know when events like this do happen what kind of manpower should we up staff,” West said. “It’s very open-ended, but it still lets you know how many calls were being generated and how many telecommunicators we need  to have at consoles to answer all of the phone calls.”

Visual data like West used has a vital role inside the PSAP. It will help identify patterns for planned and unplanned events, which allows you and your team to make adjustments and improvements for the next time a similar situation arises. This type of Next Generation data collection can make a difference in the response of the public safety officers you serve.